Sunday, September 22, 2024

Books for Downloading

One of the delights of old age is having the time and capacity to access, download and skim the books available on the internet – whether it’s the archive site which allowed you to read a book for an hour or so but, sadly, has just been attacked by book publishers and forced to remove half a million books from its site. So access the undernoted books while you can!

- Fascists  Michael Mann( 2004) Mann is one of the most interesting sociologists
- The Routledge Companion to Fascism and the Far Right ed P Davis and D Lynch 
 (2002)
- Russell Jacoby is an underrated writer and I recommend 4 of his books 
- Absent Minds Stefan Collini (2006) A fantastic british specialist in intellectual 
history
- Good and Bad Power – the ideals and betrayals of government Geoff Mulgan 
(2006). One of my favourite writers
- The Shock of the Old – technology and global history since 1900 David Edgerton 
(2008) A great english economic historian
- The Dictionary of Alternatives M Parker et al (2007) offers superb insights 
into utopian thought
- Social Justice isn’t what you think it is M Novak and P Adams (2015) great 
read which deals with the Catholic origins of the topic
- The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements ed D Snow et al (2016) 
An important topic for me
- Out of the Ordinary Marc Stears (2021) There’s been a lot of talk since 
Brexit about english identity – although the lead contender for the Tory 
leadership couldn’t give a clear answer last week to the simple question about 
what it was. He should have read this book
- War and Social Theory Neal Curtis (2006) Not quite what you expect with 
the opening chapter focusing on Heidegger
- Hate in Precarious Times Neal Curtis (2021) should be read with 
Passionate Politics emotions and social movements J Goodwin et al (2001)
- The Marxists ed C Wright Mills (1962) The famous US sociologist was not 
a Marxist – so this book (which I wasn’t aware of until downloading it) is a 
fair-minded assessment of what the doctrine offers.
- Philosophers of Technology SB Hansen (2020) Disappointing for me since 
the author fails to cover the writers I’m familiar with such as Jacques Ellul, 
Neil Postman and Jerry Mander 
- Technology and the Virtues – a philosophical guide to a future worth wanting  
 Shannon Vallor (2016). The US author, who recently moved to Scotland, has 
been exploring the effects of technology for 2 decades
- The AI Mirror – how to reclaim our humanity in an age of machine thinking 
Shannon Vallor (2024) A good read
- Liberalism in neoliberal times ed J Petley et al (2017) Liberalism has been 
under attack for the past few years – and rightly so – but it remains important 
to distinguish it from neoliberalism. Also worth reading is 
Liberalism and the challenge of climate change Chris Shaw (2024) only 149 pages!

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